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In the natural setting of the regenerative farm at Llama Deara Ranch, the llamas joyfully dance, the Chama River wrestles with and cleanses our places of rigidity, and living creatures gather to remember laughter and lightheartedness, and learn more nurturing and healing practices.
The experience of pain and suffering influences many of our lives and growth patterns. Life can be painful. Llama Deara offers another choice to the suffering, however, providing a living laboratory to compare various approaches to learning and communicating with one's self and with all of life.
As such, the Llama Deara staff promotes self-care, self-nurturing, and humor in helping visitors create their own experiential formats for learning through individual and group process and art work, both contemplative and llama-assisted work, and communion with the vast natural ecologies that populate this land.
Many of us struggle with our minds and hearts, trying valiantly to attain moments of contentment, but often finding ourselves again immersed in the automatic responses of our chorus of thoughts and feelings, confusion, uneasiness, and that uncomfortable feeling of being stuck - in our lives, relationships, and our selves.
Through the practice of self-awareness, we can see an easing of this roller coaster ride. The Director works with individuals, couples, and families to develop their self-awareness, discover their true selves, and improve their relationships with self and others. The process of re-establishing our internal sense of power and joy of life is organic and nonlinear, requiring time, commitment, and an acceptance of and education in mis-steps. In many respects, the journey of self-discovery and self-empowerment is lifelong work, nurturing play, and laughter.
With over two decades in the education and holistic health professions, the Director has trained in and fine-honed a number of healing modalities, especially the integration of cognitive and emotional understanding and expression through body, writing, art, and speaking. From her extensive training and certifications in body-oriented psychotherapy and trauma processing, and her longtime spiritual focus has emerged a holistic and mindful approach to healing, which she adapts to the needs and goals of visitors and students at Llama Deara.
Hannah-Leigh considers herself more a fellow traveler who can coach you through life challenges and experiences, as appropriate. As a holistic practitioner, she works with clients on their habits of mind, heart, body, and spirit - how their thought patterns and emotional reactions have paved the way to behavior that no longer serves them, how their body has restructured itself to accommodate the afflictive feelings and behaviors, and how their spirit can rally to use mindfulness to refine self-empowerment and intuition.
The journey of self-discovery results in better understanding of our primary relationships with family and partners. Often through the courageous work of identifying ourselves and learning more about our response to loved ones, we express deep feelings, such as grief, anger, depression, loneliness, and isolation. The Director can help her clients learn to provide space and respect for these feelings, express love and compassion more freely, and when the moment is appropriate, begin to forgive. She can offer support in the establishment of lifestyle changes and self-care.
The Director believes that each of us holds the answers within, and from this perspective, works with clients to recover their own internal resources, strength, and wisdom. Because powerlessness, illness, and discomfort are dysfunctions of the whole person, she addresses her work with you holistically, integrating the cognitive, emotional, social, physical, spiritual, and ethical.
As we become more whole, as we learn more about what motivates us and the dreams that populate our minds and hearts, our relationships with self and others begin to glow, we experience more equanimity and clarity, and we lead our lives with a sense of inner power, direction, and pleasure.
The Director has developed a course of personal development called Life Balance Training. Both day sessions and residential intensives and workshops are available for this work at Llama Deara.
The education at Llama Deara Ranch involves activities in which the children themselves develop their own experiential formats for learning, whether in groups of other children, with their families, or on their own. The children themselves, or in conjunction with adults, devise their own experiments in communication with nature and via science, art, and relationships of all kinds. Additionally, the Llama Deara staff addresses the management of relationship stress in families and parents, as an important factor in the robust and enthusiastic education of our children.
Children are our present and future, and Llama Deara welcomes individuals and groups of children of differing backgrounds, challenges, and stages of health. The magic of the llamas and the abundant diversity of the human, animal, and plant cultures encourage children to grow and learn quickly.
The llamas participate in this work wherever possible. Our relationships with animals often reflect our relationships with other humans. Some of the family or couple dynamic is revealed through interaction with the llamas. The llamas also model the basics of family system theory and practice, and can be stand-up comics, to boot!
For children with serious impairments in mental health, the Director is available for individual play therapy and also facilitates leadership groups for kids. She provides more traditional practices for parents, if desired, especially in empathetic communication and renewed intimacy.
The Director organizes workshops at Llama Deara for children and youth from day schools and residential treatment centers. Sample curricula from these workshops are available, for example, an empathy-building program for grade schoolers, and a self esteem-building program for adolescents.
Earth-based process is exploratory work that seeks to reconcile our
collective uneasiness about the state of the Earth.
In this work, we take steps to heal our relationship with
the Earth, other animals, and plant life, by reconnecting with ourselves, other
living things, and nature. Sacred circles, ceremony, games, dance and play,
art, multicultural exchanges, and meditation are some of the ways we can
synthesize our experience as individual humans with the experience of all
creation.
In the West, traditional psychotherapy has tended to address the discomfort of an individual separately from his or her environment. In recent years, healing practices are becoming more holistic and integral. As we heal our relationship with the Earth, we naturally address our own wounds and develop a closer relationship with ourselves. The Earth is a self-regenerating and self-healing entity who can teach us how to nurture and heal ourselves. Many of us have not learned how to care for ourselves, and the deeper the exploration of our relationship to the Earth, the greater our connection to our inner selves and the recognition of our lovable natures.
Specialized ServicesThe Director can provide individual sessions and workshops in the following areas (move the cursor over a service for a short summary): |
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Rates
$90 per hour Call, write, or email for more information. |
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